Etty / Susan Stein

Etty / Susan Stein

Etty is an inspiring one-woman play based on the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Using only the diarist’s words, Susan Stein’s adaptation places us beside her, in 1941, as her world order disassembles. Her story is beautiful because Etty was acutely aware of her own humanity. She sees and owns her imperfect state. She allows that others are comparably flawed. While her sense of justice calls for a balancing of the scales, she understands that demonizing her oppressors is no solution. Stripping them of their humanity simply tips the scale in the opposite direction.